(a) Technical Field
Embodiments of the present disclosure are directed to a liquid crystal lens panel and a display device including the same.
(b) Discussion of Related Art
In general, a display device displays a 2D planar image. Recently, as the demand for 3D stereoscopic images for games and movies has increased, display devices can now display 3D stereoscopic images.
A stereoscopic image display device divides and displays a left-eye image and a right-eye image that have binocular disparity to a left eye and a right eye of a viewer. The viewer views the left-eye image and the right-eye image through both eyes and recognizes a 3D effect by combining the images in the brain.
A linear polarization type stereoscopic display device uses stereoscopic glasses to divide the left-eye image and the right-eye image to make a stereoscopic image, but is inconvenient due to the need for the viewer to wear the glasses.
To address this inconvenience, recently, stereoscopic display device that do not require wearing glasses have been proposed. These types of displays include a lenticular type, a parallax type, an integral photography type, a holography type, etc., according to the device that separates the image for each eye, and recently, attention has focused on a lenticular type stereoscopic image display device.
As a lens for the lenticular type, a convex lens and a Fresnel lens may be used. A Fresnel lens is thinner than a convex lens. A Fresnel lens has a plurality of circular arcs on the surface. A Fresnel lens refracts light on the circular arcs.
Recently, liquid crystal devices which implement lenses by controlling the director distribution of a liquid crystal by an electric field have been manufactured. A liquid crystal lens includes an upper panel, a lower panel, and a thick liquid crystal layer between the upper panel and the lower panel. A liquid crystal lens includes a plurality of electrodes which control the director distribution of the liquid crystal by the application of different voltages to respective electrodes.
In this case, to provide the liquid crystal layer of the liquid crystal lens with a predetermined pretilt, alignment layers are provided on the upper panel and the lower panel of the liquid crystal lens that have a predetermined alignment angle.